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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Church and Modernity

The Church
and Modernity | Chilton
Williamson, Jr. | Catholic World Report

It is an
uneasy relationship, especially since many aspects of the “modern age” run
counter to Christian thinking and living.

The great sin of
journalists is in their reducing everything under the sun to a subject suitable
to mere journalism. Their coverage of the national debate over which
reproductive mechanisms and procedures conscientiously objecting institutions
ought to be made to pay for under the new national health care plan is a
conspicuous example of their presumptive shallowness.

The journalistic
treatment of the controversy opposes an ancient reactionary institution (the
Church of Rome), retrograde in its moral teaching (in particular where human
sexuality is concerned), with a postmodern world in urgent need of an updated
moral system in conformance with our enlightened times. The formulation
reflects the starkly simplistic terms in which journalists view the world,
allowing them to present current events and the history from which they issue
as a morality play cut free from a fixed moral code.

Pull it inside
out, however, and you have quite a different proposition to deal with, this one
on the metaphysical rather than the political level and as such entirely
unsuitable to journalism and the journalistic mind. The revised formulation
goes as follows. An upstart, materialist, shallow, ignorant, willful, and
willfully misinformed age has thrown down the gauntlet at the feet of an
Institution founded two millennia ago by God Himself, Who has been infusing it
with divine Grace and understanding ever since. If Church teachings no longer
correspond with the social conditions of our Brave New World, then we need to
compare the circumstances of the building Utopia with those of traditional
Christian societies (the sniveling Old World) in previous ages to enable us to
see where and how the new world is wanting. It is for the modern age, in other
words, to be judged by the Church, not the Church by the modern age.